PROTECT THE BEARS

Don't reintroduce them into Bitterroot Selway Frank Church Wilderness
long time forester says.

My name is Ed Bloedel. I am retired from the Forest Service. I've been with the Forest Service for over 34 years. I've also worked here in the Bitterroot. I live here now in Corvallis, Mt and I'm speaking for myself. I've been in and out of the Bitterroot a lot and I was also a national wilderness management coordinator for the Forest Service for four years in Washington D.C.

I favor a modified Alternative two, the natural recovery of the grizzly bear in the Bitterroot Ecosystem. This alternative needs to be modified however to require a detailed habitat inventory identifying the actual acreage of suitable food areas on spring, fall and summer ranges. Estimates in the amount of forage produced and from it, a new realistic numerical recovery number identified.

The reason for this is that the habitat, I don't believe, is there. If there's truly enough quality habitat away from people, the bears will eventually return naturally. Currently, there's insufficient data on the actual quality of habitat, primarily the food producing areas available in this system. The limited research doesn't show this. It doesn't give figures. If research is available, why is there a proposed goal of 280 to 500 bears? There must be something different there. One alternative says 280, another 500.

Only one valid study of Davis Butterfield, and that's apparently not published, has begun to gather the necessary habitat information. This study doesn't quantify the actual acreage of vegetation with bear food, nor pounds of forage available for grizzlies. Majority of the acreage in the Selway-Bitterroot is rock. A substantial amount of acreage in the Selway-Bitterroot and the Frank-Church is thick but sheer forest with little or no food source. Past food sources are not there, such as Whitebark pine which has been reduced 20 to 40 percent of its original abundance, salmon and steelhead runs are not there.

The lack of naturally occurring fires because of Forest Service efficient fire fighting and Forest Service and public resistance to allowing natural fires to burn as much as they used to, has resulted in much less sterile landscape of grasses, shrubs and food supply of the grizzlies.

The entire Bitterroot Valley and much of the Clearwater Valley is filled up with humans. That reduces the spring range essentially to the Selway River or the bears will be killed as they come out here in the Bitterroot. Make no mistake about it.

Several places, you already admit that in the EIS. not enough is known about the habitat. If they're here, why aren't they here now?

I also favor Alternative two because it's much less costly. While eventually meeting recovery goals, the same recovery goals are just going to take a little bit longer.

The third reason is that it protects the bears better than your preferred alternative. The bears are still under the Endangered Species Act, protection under this alternative. While returning naturally, they will get used to human activity more slowly and learn to avoid heavy human population areas, such as the Bitterroot Valley.

My fourth reason for Alternative two is that bear recovery numbers can be as high as preferred alternative, provided of course, that a realistic number is arrived at after a good habitat survey.

A fifth reason is that contrary to your conclusion that there be no economic benefits to alternative two, there would be the same economic benefits as the preferred alternative. The grizzlies are recovering under either of these alternatives and therefore these alleged economic benefits which are really based on pie-in-the-sky guesses, anyway, would be the same for either alternative.

You have analyzed this preferred alternative with the positive light possible, while downplaying or actually emphasizing other negative results of the others. And I understand that because of my experience with EIS's.

My sixth and final reason for Alternative two is that the proposed Citizen's Management Committee will not function and will cost the taxpayers much more in the process. This committee will have no decision-making authority. The committee will be made up of politically appointed hacks rather than knowledgeable experienced retired public land managers, scientists, or outdoor people familiar with the Bitterroot Ecosystem. It will have members with such firm opposing philosophies that they will spend most of their time bickering and posturing until the committee reaches an impasse and the Secretary of the Interior takes over.

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